Fiery Tears
by ArbitraryFate
Summary: 'You will cry only three times for as long as you live; this time is the first.' Roy-centric. Graphic depictions of war.


When you were five years old, you burned your hand on the stove. The pain was blinding. You yelled out, terrified, your eyes filling with tears (you will cry only three times for as long as you live; this time is the first). _Roy!_ , you remember your mother shouting, jumping to the rescue, pouring cold water on your injured palm. _Be more careful, sweetheart_ , you remember her saying. You smell a strange scent in the air; the smell of burning.

This is one of the earliest (the only) memories you have of your mother; a few days later, she (and your father, though you don't remember him much) die in a car crash. You remember wanting to feel sad.

But you don't remember feeling much of anything. Only the kind of numbness one feels when their entire life is turned upside down in the space of a few seconds. That kind of numbness leaves no place for grief.

The second time you cry happens to be the day that you die. Or at least, what some theologians would call _your soul_ dies. And while you've always been skeptical of religion, you certainly feel that way, now.

You're part of a group sent to scout one of the outskirts of the Ishbalan capital city. The war is almost over; you can feel its weight in the air as you walk through the deserted streets. The buildings are empty, but your men find some leftover weapons and ammunition amongst the corpses. The war has cost Amestris a great deal of money, and it is generally agreed upon that there should be no further waste of resources.

As you're walking down some alley, barely conscious of your surroundings, you notice the empty houses. Rows and rows of them, windows shattered. This place has become ghost town. You think about how the corpses littering the streets are like those empty houses: the windows smashed, the living room wrecked, the jewelry stolen, the inhabitants gone. That's what murderers are, and that's what you are: a thief, a window-smasher. You break into people's houses and destroy their possessions. You take the food from the fridge, you knock over the furniture, you smash the family portraits.

You burn the house down until nothing is left but glowing embers.

A faint scuttling noise wakes you from your reverie. Could be a rat. You wish it was a rat. You're sure it was a rat. You check anyway (years later, you wonder what made you check; your mother always said you were too curious for your own good, but you've known for a long time that it wasn't that that made you check, it was never that, it was always something _other_ , some force, steering you towards that alleyway, as if the cosmos knew that after this, after _this_ , you would change, you would _die_ , you would be kind to Edward Elric, you would help him, because his wheelchair-bound look when you came into his house, his look _reminded_ you of something, didn't it?). And so, you turn the corner down the dark alleyway.

The body of a dead dog lies at the end of the alleyway, its fur coat coated in blood, its body half decomposed and swarming with flies. Two mangy street cats are ripping the stringy dog-flesh from its bone with their dirty claws; but they're not the only ones feasting on the corpse. Three Ishbalan children, couldn't be older than nine or ten, their bulging eyes bright red and their thin hair electric white, their clothes tattered, their faces thin and worn, their teeth rotten, their bodies too emaciated to tell their separate genders; on all fours, fighting with each other, fighting with the cats, fighting for a piece of the meat. They look so _hungry_ , so _desperate_ , so inhuman.

They only even notice you when they hear the soft _thump_ of your knees on the sandstone. The cats hiss and flee. The children stare at you, with their red, lifeless, blood-shot eyes. They're past being afraid. There is nothing left for them, here, in this hellish country. There is only death; and in spite of the artists and musicians and writers who tell tales of heroism, there is neither dignity nor honour in death.

Death is simply death; no more, no less.

And as you hold their dull gaze, you realize that they too are, in a way, like you; simply waiting to _die_.

And so you cry. You cry like you've never cried before. You cry for these three dead-eyed children, you cry for all the children of Ishbal, you cry for the countless suffering children that have been, and you cry for the ones that shall be, but most of all you cry for their parents. You are mourning the death of the relatively happy person you once were, and you are mourning the death of someone you never knew: the person you could have been, should have been, might have been, if things had been different. But that person can never be.

Not after this.

Your face is wet and red when you decide to be merciful. You take your gloves off your shaking hands and stuff them in your pocket. You take your gun out of your holster. Your hands are shaking, your vision is blurry, and you've never been as good a shot as Riza; but, then again, it's hard to miss three still bodies at such a short distance.

The only person you ever tell is Maes, years later, after having too much to drink at some scuzzy bar in Central the two of you often frequent. The truth comes spilling out of you like an uncorked wine bottle, and though your eyes never water as you tell the story, Maes slowly presses your face into his shoulder and strokes your hair gently. He always knows... _knew_ what to do to make you feel safe. No words are spoken for many minutes before you finally mutter against his uniform, 'We can never really go home, can we?' Maes sighs, and whispers in your ear, 'New homes can be built, Roy.'

It's strange that that scene at the bar comes to your mind at Maes' funeral, but you can't stop yourself from thinking about it. Your mind seems to replay his words every time the gravediggers add a shovelful of dirt on top of him his coffin. You feel like screaming. You feel like wrenching the shovels out of the apathetic gravediggers' hands. You feel like dropping to your knees from the weight of Elysia's confused tears. And in your mind, the words ring out, 'New homes can be built, Roy.'

You know that there are civilizations out there, including your own, that believe that a soul may rest in peace until the body is six feet under the cold, dark soil. But Maes was always made of light and laughter, and the fact that he bled out alone in the dead of night is only another injury.

You feel like screaming.

You feel like dropping to your knees and digging up the dirt until your fingers are bloody and bruised to set the only man you've ever truly loved free from the dirt prison that now surrounds him.

It's probably one of the hardest things you've ever done, holding it all in. Yet before you know it, everyone around you leaves, one by one. You are alone in the graveyard, save for Riza; and, of course, the dozens of nondescript military graves. You can't help thinking about children hundreds of years from now, long after you and everyone you know has died, walking through this cemetery. You can't help imagining the children running between the graves, maybe one or two of them stopping to look at the old, worn-out names, belonging to the long forgotten people. And you wish with all your heart that you could be there to shout at them, _Don't you dare look past this one! He was a father, a husband, a soldier… my_ saviour _. He helped so many people. He helped_ me _. He_ saved _me._ You almost chuckle at the idea, knowing Maes would call you ridiculous, and that he himself would probably quite enjoy being a part of the laughter and fun of children, even in death.

You feel like screaming.

You feel like dropping to your knees.

And, for the first time in a long time, you feel like crying.

And so you cry.


End file.
